The first sign on pain

Actually, those were not Joe's exact words, but basically his caution was to be careful of injury when running, and don't push it when trouble develops. Good advice. That's one of the great things about the three day per week plan. When something starts to tweak or twinge, you get an extra day to see how it feels. In fact, since even numbers-challenged geniuses like Gewilli can calculate that seven minus three equals four, we can see that on the three day per week plan, we get two consecutive "off" days each and every week. Very handy.

When I first started upping the mileage on my bike, all sorts of aches and pains reared their ugly heads. Ancients and Honorables like Il Bruce will recall the days of non-floating pedals, nail on cleats, and wooden soled Duegis. The cycling rags and training books of the day (this was pre-internet for everyone except a handful of geeks at Berkeley and MIT) had their sportsmed type advice for cyclists, and I diagnosed myself with every malady known to medicine, from chrondomalacia to tendinitis and much more. Well, maybe I left off "dislocated patella." Think Meg's picture was gross? Try throwing that one into a google image search.

Anyway, of course I was wrong. Other than a lifetime's worth of abused cartilage, I had no real problem other than too much mileage too soon. I survived to train another day. Fast forward twenty years, and here I am ramping up my running mileage. Same situation, new little aches and pains, stuff I never had while cycling. The extra day between runs is a great way to evaluate these issues. Of course you'll be sore when you train hard, but after a day or two it shouldn't be so bad.

The three day approach works great for cycling too, especially in the winter. The first "program" I ever got from one of my informal coaches was the one hard day, one long day, and one fast day per week program of mandatory workouts. Everything else was optional. This is very similar to the FIRST running program, and it works. The three day program allows you a lot of flexibility too. You can always make up a missed workout on the weekend. This only leave one freakin' day during the week that you must find time for a workout. Hell, even if you bag out on a day, you can still make up 66% of your planned training on the weekend. Anyone can follow this!

Yesterday, I snuck out for a late lunch about an hour before it got dark. Rather than try to do "speedwork" on the horse track, I decided to substitute hills. I ran over to Houghton's Pond and did the short, steep paved hill in the woods. Then I ran back down and crossed the road in front of the State Police stables. Hill number two was the gravel fireroad that leads over toward Big Blue. Originally I planned to turn around at the crest and go back, but halfway up I realized I had enough daylight to try the access road. Passing two whitetails, I forged on. The trail comes out on the access road about a quarter of the way up. Just as I came out to the road, a guy on a mountain bike slogged by. I started running up the climb behind him. He wasn't going too fast and I stayed about twenty feet back, close enough to see the "Saturn of Dayton" jersey poking out the bottom of his jacket. I think I've seen this guy at Wompatuck before.

Running up the hill was not as hard as I expected. At the switchback, the rider caught a glimpse of me and started picking it up to avoid the embarrassment of being passed by a runner. I kept going until I got to where the ski slope joins the road, then turned onto the grass and tried to run down. Later I'd find from my spiffy new Timex GPS Ironman that I'd covered .6 miles on the 10% grade at a 9:44 pace. Not too shabby. I'll have to try a top to bottom sometime to see how it compares to my bike times. I think I could run a mid eight. Running down the ski slope was much slower. This was a mistake. It sucked. I traversed and stutterstepped my way to the bottom, then took the perimeter trail that leads around the front of the hill back to work. This was OK at first, but then it turns into a rocky hiking trail and I had to walk a few sections. I made it back to work 48 minutes after leaving, and the GPS said I covered 5.45 miles. So that is good to know; I can run Blue Hill on my lunch hour.

Today is telecommuting day, and it wasn't raining this morning, so I went over to Borderland on my MTB. I was tired so I rode pretty slow. Once again I tried the "new" Bob's trail, which is nice twisty single track, should be "cleanable" but so far not for me. There is a long, narrow, plank bridge that I keep wigging on. There are also a few stonewalls that I can clean in one direction, but not the other. All in all though, this is a cool little trail and lots of fun. Today I also saw two whitetailed does, but this time I didn't just see them, I got close enough to smell them, a first for me. Huh-huh, I finally sniffed some white tail. I was rolling along quietly and I guess they didn't know I was coming because they practically ran right into me, not leaving the trail until I was about fifteen feet from them.

That made for a great morning and an easy hour on the bike before sitting down to work. My right knee had been a touch sore, probably from bouncing down the ski slope, but the ride did me well and all is good right now. See how nicely that worked out? Thanks for reading.